I have just been checking the yearly stats for a blog I manage, and there is one post from 2008 that is getting a LOT of views, which doesn't make any sense as the info in it is outdated.
I pulled the access_log entries for this post and am finding a lot of referrers from cials-pills-online.info and sites like that. Not a lot of entries for any one of these sites, but say 20-30 a month.
I have looked around the site and can't see anything obvious amiss. Can anyone tell me where to look and what to look for to see if there's any monkey business related to this post?
Well there is a rather simple way to see if it is really monkey business or not if you dont need it delete the post and resubmit it it really depends on the post what is it on maybe you just did some great SEO or are ranking for a relative keyword. If they are leaving comments maybe its just for backlinks this happens when you have a post that is for example my site is on planes and i make a post on cars so I get people that want backlinks from a site on cars
There are also a lot of great security plugins just search in plugins
Related
I need to make a website for my hockey club. My main purpose for this site is allowing people to sign in and post articles and training schedules in their section. Eg Mens, Womens, Juniors and Masters. I want to have some kind of upload manager that will allow them to choose where they post the info too (eg, Mens, Masters and Homepage).
This is the main functionality I'm looking for at the moment.
The clubs previous website used Joombla which I have hated. I found it to be way to restrictive. Its on a old version of it so there are probably many improvements in the new version but from what I've read it seems like it still has a lot of restrictions in how content is managed. I am open to trying it again tho.
I've used Wordpress before and liked it but that was on a small scale projects and I'm not sure it really fits what I'll be trying to do here, since it mostly deals with blog posts and I'll need to have functionality to upload and display files.
I've had a look around at some other ones like Squarespace and Silverstripe. I'm really liking the simplicity of silverstrip(one thing I hate about Joombla is the clutter on the opening page) and am leaning towards it right now if I can find a nice way to have people post news to multiple pages at once.
If anyone has any suggestions they'd be very welcome. I know html, css, javascript and a bit of php. I'm learning Ruby atm so wouldn't be against using it so I could learn more but it might be a bit much for a sports website.
First off, its nice to see someone that likes hockey too :) You can't use Squarespace, you'll need an Apache server for what you want. You will need some way to store information, so you'll need a MySQL database, probably some advanced knowledge of PHP (I'm assuming you don't know how to connect to databases and do some other functions). Wordpress is too limited, so you can't use that. I have never used Silverstripe personally, but it seems like the best of your options here. You'll probably need some more knowledge of PHP before you attempt to make a members system.
I am making a website which allows people to discuss news topics. I was looking to make like a news feed which shows the most talked about topics and topics followed by users however I am not sure how to do this? As in I can't think of a process to do this and I don't think Rss feed's are the answer, help would be appreciated.
Same here. I am developing a website too and learning how to develop an RSS engine of my own.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/rss/default.stm#mysite
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-RSS-Feed
But I need more information. What I know is- RSS feeder itself searches for latest content on the news websites or blogs (by looking at their dates perhaps) and it places the latest post on top. Now the problem is that I am not able to create that. I need to know a lot about RSS and specially XML.
But your problem is different I think. You want to show the trending post on the top. Then, I think you will need to create an algorithm to rank your pages/posts. And this algorithm should evaluate the real hotness of the content. For example a 20 days old post on your website might still be hotter than latest trending news and it might be searched in the top news.
But now the question is how would this algorithm decide whether a post hot or not? Well this can be done on the basis of likes or hearts give to it by users, comments on the page, links in the comments on the page, shares (you can track that), and external links to your post etc etc. Now it's up to you what you will prefer to make your post trending. You can give more weightage to external links or maybe comments or you could set limits to all of these which when reach gives a sign of full success of the post.
Sorry If you don't get it. I was just thinking of the solutions. I really don't know the solution to it already.
I never needed to play a lot with RSS, but now I have a project to do, and I wonder if it is possible to pull an RSS feed of all the posts for a certain blog...
I'm not talking about creating a feed generator. I'm just curious why most of the blogspot.com etc websites have available only the last 5 or last 20 posts, but never the complete list... is it a performance/security reason? I guess it is the user's right to decide how many posts go in the feed, right?
How many entries you want to have in your RSS-Feed depends on the goals you want to achieve with the RSS-Feed. Usually you want to provide information about the current articles on your site. That's why you usually have only the most recent articles in the feed.
Performance is of course an issue. A popular RSS-Feed with many followers does not want to send a huge XML file all the time. That can be addressed with enough ressources, but as long as it does not really help your goal, why do it?
I do not see a real security issue. If someone wants to steal your content, he can simple iteratate over the articles on your website directly. RSS would make it a little easier, but if someone wants to steal the content, he will steal it anyway, with or without a full RSS feed. If you take Denial of Service into consideration - we are back at performance issues - there might be a threat to availability. But that's already quite speculative.
I was looking at amazon.com and noticed for a product like: "Really Really Really Long Book Title," they will have a URL like: "amazon.com/Really-Long-Book-Title/ref?id=1&anotherId=2,"
and for a short title like: "Success," they will add other words, like the author name: "amazon.com/Success-John-Smith/ref?id=1&anotherId=2." If I remove these words, like so: "amazon.com/ref?id=1&anotherId=2," the URL still resolves.
Does it hurt SEO to have multiple URLs that resolve to the same page?
How are these words even added to the URL? Is it done programmatically, or do they have someone hand-pick words and store them in a database for each product?
I've been trying to expand my knowledge about SEO so I'd really like to learn how this is being done as thoroughly as possible. I'd greatly appreciate the recommendation of any resources, and also advice based on person experience so that if I implement URLs like this, I can do it correctly. I know I can Google this stuff, but there always seems to be 1,000 ways to do something and I'd just to hear some personal recommendations.
For what it's worth, I use asp.net 4.0 (c#) and the IIS7 URL rewrite toolkit.
Thanks a lot!
IIS7 URL rewrite toolkit is a best tool to use in your case. Here are my answers to your questions.
Does it hurt SEO to have multiple URLs that resolve to the same page?
It does not, as long as you show search engines which URL is a primary one. You can do this by adding rel="canonical"in the primary link page. The best example of this is StackOverflow, which is doing very well in terms of SEO. Now, if you use http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5392137/ you will be pointed to this page, if you use http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5392137/url-rewrite-adding-keywords you will be on this page as well. Obviously the second ULR has more keywords, which is great for SEO, and it is more user friendly as well, since users know what the URL is all about.
How are these words even added to the
URL? Is it done programmatically, or
do they have someone hand-pick words
and store them in a database for each
product?
If you are a developer, then it is not your responsibility any more. SEO is 20% technical, 80% marketing(it is my rough calculation, you know the point.:-)). Those marketing folks should handle that after you give them an access to write or rewrite ULRs. They may find some keywords and add some of them in URL based on their tactics. Elad Lachmi gave a good answer on this question. StackOverflow is using question titles as a URL,which is reasonable. Hiring lots of SEOers to find keywords based on different questions and then manually add to URLs is not a good option for SO. But for commercial web sites, it is worthwhile to hire someone to manually do it. The answer is based on what kind of web site yours is.
Hope this helps
I love the rewrite toolkit because you can do ANYTHING!
From my experience, letting the content editor set whatever URL they like is the best option. Computer are not big on semantics. You can create set rules, and they might be ok (It`s not that hard to tell a computer "if the title is not long enough, add the author name"), but since a human adds the products anyway, a little SEO tutorial for the content editors can go a long way. You would be surprised what people who know thier products can come up with. I have seen great titles and URLs done by our content editors, that I would never think of in a million years from my position as a developer.
I have a real estate agent client who wants a website to list the properties he's selling. Although there are great 3rd party web apps out there that do this, he adamantly demands that I recreate a simple and custom website for him.
I can do this quickly with a php framework like Code Igniter that comes with MVC, data access objects and data bind controllers. The database would be straightforward:
t_page: generic content pages
t_property: for each property on the market, has fields like address, price, #of bed rooms etc..
However, the client has heard many great things about Wordpress, and strongly advises that I build his real estate site with it. I've only used Wordpress to create blogs and relatively straightforward websites. SO I dont know how effective it is as a real estate property content management system or how effective it is for users to search for real estate properties based on attributes such as "# of bedrooms, square footage, is basement finished etc..."
So my question is, is it a good idea to build a real estate agent website with Wordpress? Or should I try harder to convince him to build it with web framework like Code Igniter?
Rather than argue with your client about the future platform or CMS or listen to people for/opposed to WP out of principle, sit down with your client and map out exactly what he/she wants to do in terms of the site. How do they want to add material or blog posts? How easy should it be? How do they they want users to be able to search: by price range, location, etc? Get them to show you on other sites how they want things to work.
Then look at the capabilities of various CMS's, frameworks and the like. Investigate search and MLS plugins, property XML feeds, maps. Determine what other real estate sites use (esp. his/her competitors).
Then explain your decision with evidence as to what they want to do compared to what's possible with different systems. They may talk themselves in or out of systems without your help.
It's called working with a client so they get what they want in terms of usability and end-user functions, not imposing what you want on their project. Sure, you know what you are talking about in terms of getting things to work, but they don't care; they want it to work in a certain way: their way.
(And see what's already out there in terms of Real Estate WordPress Plugins and WordPress Real Estate Themes).
I've developed several real estate sites using Joomla and openRealty, and I have tried to create a decent real estate site for my wife using Wordpress due to it's ease of use for end-users, but unfortunately programming a real estate site in Wordpress is tricky. It's a blogging engine and not terribly good at "directory" based information. So I find that the ease of use goes out the window as you try to hack together real estate functionality. Then you are asking your end-users to create custom-fields, etc and it becomes a pain and you end spending too much time managing your end-users.
I love WP. But, a directory style site is not it's highest and best use.
If the client is so adamant that you use WP for his site then let him do it. Then wait till he comes crawling back to you when he can't get it to do what he wants and you can build in properly in CI.
You wouldn't tell a plumber to fix your toilet with a socket set...
Check out ExpressionEngine, it's perfect for this as you can create custom fields (# bedrooms, square footage etc.) and retrieve content by any of these custom fields using the {exp:channel:entries} tag.
So basically you'd create a channel for these listings and then use "custom fields" for the data about each of these listings (specified by the needs of your client).
If you need design for this site "City Guide" from WooThemes will be available for EE as of tonight ;-)
And since you mention CodeIgniter - EE 2.0 is built on CI and if you need some custom functionality it's all CI so that should feel like home.
Wordpress custom post types would work well for this sort of site.. A custom page template and modified WP_Query would provide the basis of the site.
As mentioned by everyone else, WP probably isn't the absolute best tool for the job, but it would not be a bad choice. I've done weirder things with it.
Old question but still relevant. My opinion is that WordPress is not a good option for creating real estate listing sites. The main reason is that it is designed primarily as a blogging engine so it requires a lot of work to set up and is susceptible to getting hacked. More detailed explanation here:
https://smallbusinessforum.co/why-an-alternative-to-wordpress-is-needed-for-real-estate-websites-ff82de096d93#.j2cduk4xs
I think that using Wordpress is a plus, not because it is the best program to use, but if you make the site properly, and he wants to add/change something, you (and many other people out there) can mold it to his needs.
There are a lot of plugins you could extract some php code from and make a good listing. You also have the option of using post_types (which are saved as posts), custom fields (which all the fields are saved in one table but indexed), or creating your own tables (adding tables function or using a plugin like PODS).
I think you will save time on coding if you go with Wordpress, and customization is pretty okay (not anywhere near decent, but I am pretty sure this site will be the next craigslist). Wordpress is the 1995 Toyota Tercel of CMSs: it won't be great, but it gets the job done, and almost everyone has worked on it at some point in their live.
If the money is good, then try to wow him with a CI demo. But with WP, could probably accomplish your task in a few hours. There are ways to set up CI around Wordpress, but that is beyond me.